2 BIBLES FROM 1526 SPOTLIGHTED : LIBRARY SALUTING TRANSLATOR'S IMPACT.

Byline: Gustav Niebuhr The New York Times

Reunions that unite the long-separated are momentous occasions. So it seemed appropriate that a few people should have gathered Friday morning to watch as an employee of the New York Public Library gently wheeled out a cart containing the only two complete copies of a nearly 500-year-old New Testament.

It may have been the first time the two had been placed side by side since they came off the printing press in 1526. The two books will form the centerpiece of an exhibition that the library, at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, will open to the public Feb. 22, titled ``Let There Be Light: William Tyndale and the Making of the English Bible.''

Tyndale - an English priest born about 1494, educated at Oxford and Cambridge, an admirer of the Reformation leader Martin Luther who worked in European exile - is not well-known outside the ranks of Bible scholars. Yet Tyndale can be appreciated for both religious and secular reasons.

The first person to translate Scripture into ordinary English from the original Hebrew and Greek, he powerfully influenced the style of the Bible's King James Version.

But Tyndale also enriched the language itself, coining phrases that have become embedded in common speech (``fight the good fight,'' ``the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak'' and ``eat, drink and be merry,'' among others).

As someone whose work was intended for popular use, he promoted learning as well as the revolutionary idea that people should have access to information without mediation by the state.

``This cost him his life,'' observed Dr. Paul LeClerc, the library's president, who stood nearby as the books were readied for a display case. The exhibition, LeClerc said, was symbolic of the library's commitment to freedom of expression.

The Tyndale New Testaments come from the British Library and from the State Library of Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart, Germany. Until only three months ago, the British copy was thought to be the only complete one in existence. Then, in November, the German volume turned up as researchers in the Stuttgart library were recataloging its Bible collection.

Although Tyndale printed thousands of the books, which were smuggled into England, piles were intercepted and burned by the church authorities, who believed that allowing lay people to read and interpret the Scripture on their own would undermine the social order, destroying faith and morals.

Copies not burned probably deteriorated from overuse.

``They were simply read to pieces,'' said Dr. Mervyn Jannetta, head of the English Antiquarian Section at the British Library, who was at the New York library Friday.

Some years before Tyndale began his translation, he declared his ambition to a learned acquaintance: ``If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than thou doest.''

Although he was a pioneer, he was not the first. In the 14th century, followers of John Wycliff produced an English Bible, but they worked closely from Latin and tried closely to follow its structure, resulting in a less than felicitous style. Their work had been largely suppressed by Tyndale's day, scholars say.

In the preface to his New Testament, Tyndale told readers that he was working on his own: ``I had no man to counterfeit.''

Despite that, Jannetta said, the text has relatively few errors of translation.

``It's puzzled people that he should have got it right and done it single-handedly, and in such a short space of time,'' he said. ``And in such adversity. It wasn't as if he was on a government grant.''

After completing his New Testament, Tyndale taught himself Hebrew and translated the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, and nine other Old Testament books.

But his work came to an end in 1535, in the midst of the political and religious upheaval of the Reformation, when he was arrested in Antwerp by men loyal to Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor. After trial for heresy, Tyndale was publicly strangled and his body burned in October 1536.

The library's exhibition will include the last known document to leave his hand, a letter, written from prison, asking the local ruler for a warm cap to ward off the cold as well as a Hebrew Bible, grammar book and dictionary so that, he said, ``I may pass my time in study.''

Dr. Erroll Rhodes, a senior editor for scholarly works at the American Bible Society, said Tyndale's great achievement lies in his decision to present Scripture in the plain speech of his time. The ``directness with which he wrote became a literary style,'' Rhodes said, ``and the standard'' for all future Bible translators.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: These are pages from the only two known copies of a nearly 500-year-old English translation of the Bible. The books from Britain, left, and Germany, right, will be displayed Feb 22. in New York.

The New York Times